52. A Night at the Pipe

Last week I went for a night dive at “the Pipeline,” in Nelson Bay, with Dave Harasti, who has dived, studied, and helped protect the area for over a decade. This post is photographic, a record of the dive’s creatures.

The area where we spent most of our time was a little away from the main site, a field of soft coral. Those corals are teeming with small animals – cowrie shells, decorator crabs who start out clothed in coral before graduating to sponges…

… so much small-scale life that it was startling when this enormous Armina came crawling towards us like a cat.